The Apollo Affair facts for kids

The Apollo Affair was an event in 1965 involving a US company called Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC). This company was located in the towns of Apollo and Parks Township, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. The company was investigated because a large amount of special uranium, between 200 and 600 pounds (about 90 to 270 kg), went missing. People wondered if this uranium had been secretly sent to Israel for its nuclear program.

What Happened at NUMEC?

From 1965 to 1980, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) looked into the company's president, Zalman Shapiro. About 206 pounds (93 kg) of special uranium was missing. Shapiro was a strong supporter of Israel and had many connections with important people in the Israeli government. He even had a contract to build nuclear-powered generators for Israel.

The Investigations Begin

Other government groups, like the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also investigated. Reporters looked into it too. Even after all these investigations, no one was ever charged with a crime. A government study, made public in 2010, said that if these agencies had worked together quickly, they might have solved the mystery of the missing NUMEC uranium.

In 1976, the CIA told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that they believed the missing uranium had gone to Israel. The NRC then told the White House. This led to President-elect Carter learning about the investigation. Carter asked his top safety advisor for an opinion. The advisor's team concluded that the CIA's idea was "convincing, though not completely proven."

What Happened to the Uranium?

Some people still believe that Israel received 206 pounds (93 kg) or more of the special uranium from NUMEC. This idea grew stronger because Rafi Eitan, who was later known as an Israeli spy, visited the NUMEC plant. He was also involved in the Jonathan Pollard incident later on. In 1986, an expert named Anthony Cordesman said, "There is no good reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] except for the nuclear material."

However, in his 1991 book, The Samson Option, author Seymour Hersh had a different idea. He believed that Shapiro did not send any uranium to Israel. Instead, Hersh thought the uranium ended up in the air and water around Apollo, and stuck to the inside of the NUMEC plant. He also wrote that Shapiro's meetings with Israeli officials were about protecting Israel's water supply, not about moving nuclear materials.

Later Discoveries and Cleanup

A later investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which took over from the AEC, looked into another 198 pounds (90 kg) of uranium that went missing between 1974 and 1976. This was after another company, Babcock & Wilcox, bought the plant and Shapiro was no longer involved. That investigation found that over 110 pounds (50 kg) of it could be explained. It was lost in ways like sticking to workers' clothes, getting into cleaning systems, or being left behind in the factory's equipment. Hersh also quoted a main investigator, Carl Duckett, who said he had "nothing at all to indicate that Shapiro was guilty."

In 1993, Glenn T. Seaborg, who used to lead the Atomic Energy Commission, wrote a book. He wondered if Shapiro's career would have been even more famous if these unfair accusations had not been made against him.

Later records from the U.S. Department of Energy showed that NUMEC had the largest loss of special uranium among all US commercial sites. They lost about 269 kg (593 lb) before 1968, and 76 kg (168 lb) after that.

In 2009, Zalman Shapiro's lawyer asked Senator Arlen Specter to have the NRC officially clear Shapiro. The NRC refused. They said they found no specific proof that uranium was taken. However, they also said they couldn't completely say that no nuclear material was taken, or that all the missing material was found during the cleanup of the site.

In 2014, more documents about the investigation were made public, but many parts were still blacked out.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now in charge of cleaning up the contaminated land where NUMEC's waste was dumped. This project was supposed to finish in 2015. But they found much more contamination than expected, causing a seven-year delay. Digging is now planned to start in 2021 and is expected to take 10 years.

The Apollo Affair in Books and Movies

The Apollo Affair has appeared in popular culture:

• In the book The Fifth Horseman by Dominique LaPierre and Larry Collins, the incident is mentioned as part of the story about Israel's nuclear weapons. The book suggests that the CIA believed at least half of the uranium went to Israel.
• In the movie The Sum of All Fears, a character named Jack Ryan asks where plutonium went. This is a made-up reference to the Apollo Affair. In the movie, an Israeli plane carrying a plutonium bomb is shot down. The bomb is found by scrap dealers, and its plutonium is sold to bad guys.